Robotech ships versus the Three Galaxies

[Tor]

Is it just me or... would it be very difficult for any force in the Three Galaxies to resist an invasion by the top-tier ships of the Robotech universe?

I had mostly just looked at OCCs/mecha for a while but actually looking for ships and comparing their ranges and speeds to that of the Three Galaxies...

Far as I know the strongest thing in the Phase World dimension (3 Galaxies) is the Kreeghor Dreadnought (Rifts Dimension Book 3 page 103. Their first Weapon System, the Horn Cannons, have the longest range I know of in space combat.

Shadow Chronicels 120: the Ikazuchi carrier's Particle Cannon Turrets: by gawd! The Ikazuchi may have less MDC than the Dreadnought, but their gun has double the range! They can fly Mach 1.5 faster so they can always maintain it! It's like... who cares if they don't have force fields? Do they even need them when they can just stay out of range of the Kreeghor's weapons?

It seems like the only defense would be Cruise Missiles... but at that range, even with their high speeds, it seems like there would be plenty of time to shoot them down. 240 miles for the fastest (2010mph) LRMs would take under 12% of an hour, or over 7 minutes. That means you could use the main gun over 56 times. This is also ignoring that if you are moving away from the Dreadnought at top speed to maintain your range advantage, you will be going triple the speed of any LRMs they fire so they could basically never catch up with you...

Shadow Cronicles' Gardish cruiser on 123 is even worse! Even more of a range advantage.

With the Ikazuchi or Gardish able to take out the Trans-Galactic Empire single-handedly (short of some kind of magical interference to cross space and teleport onto their ships, yay Silhouettes?) how could anything stand against the ships in Robotech?

What's left to challenge Robotech? Something in AU or Mechanoids? Rifts is clearly underpowered here.

Obviously the Reflex cannon of the SDF-1 in Macross page 147. Plus the flagship of the Zentraedi on page 193 the Neputiet-Vergnitzes' Particle Cannon may not have the damage but it has the uber-range of the Reflex cannon that is just too outclassing of anything in 3 Galaxies.

But besides the big 2... even a mere destroy on 197, the Thuverl-Salan... half range is still AMAZING range. Plus more than enough speed to maintain it.

I'm not sure if there's anything like this in the Masters Saga sourcebook.

Kreeghor and CCW are just plain screwed if these ships get over. I think only UWW would have a chance since they have gods and mages who could possible make rifts into the ships themselves and bypass the range problem.

[Lt Gargoyle]

Is it just me or... would it be very difficult for any force in the Three Galaxies to resist an invasion by the top-tier ships of the Robotech universe?

I had mostly just looked at OCCs/mecha for a while but actually looking for ships and comparing their ranges and speeds to that of the Three Galaxies...

Far as I know the strongest thing in the Phase World dimension (3 Galaxies) is the Kreeghor Dreadnought (Rifts Dimension Book 3 page 103. Their first Weapon System, the Horn Cannons, have the longest range I know of in space combat.

Shadow Chronicels 120: the Ikazuchi carrier's Particle Cannon Turrets: by gawd! The Ikazuchi may have less MDC than the Dreadnought, but their gun has double the range! They can fly Mach 1.5 faster so they can always maintain it! It's like... who cares if they don't have force fields? Do they even need them when they can just stay out of range of the Kreeghor's weapons?

It seems like the only defense would be Cruise Missiles... but at that range, even with their high speeds, it seems like there would be plenty of time to shoot them down. 240 miles for the fastest (2010mph) LRMs would take under 12% of an hour, or over 7 minutes. That means you could use the main gun over 56 times. This is also ignoring that if you are moving away from the Dreadnought at top speed to maintain your range advantage, you will be going triple the speed of any LRMs they fire so they could basically never catch up with you...

Shadow Cronicles' Gardish cruiser on 123 is even worse! Even more of a range advantage.

With the Ikazuchi or Gardish able to take out the Trans-Galactic Empire single-handedly (short of some kind of magical interference to cross space and teleport onto their ships, yay Silhouettes?) how could anything stand against the ships in Robotech?

What's left to challenge Robotech? Something in AU or Mechanoids? Rifts is clearly underpowered here.

Obviously the Reflex cannon of the SDF-1 in Macross page 147. Plus the flagship of the Zentraedi on page 193 the Neputiet-Vergnitzes' Particle Cannon may not have the damage but it has the uber-range of the Reflex cannon that is just too outclassing of anything in 3 Galaxies.

But besides the big 2... even a mere destroy on 197, the Thuverl-Salan... half range is still AMAZING range. Plus more than enough speed to maintain it.

I'm not sure if there's anything like this in the Masters Saga sourcebook.

Kreeghor and CCW are just plain screwed if these ships get over. I think only UWW would have a chance since they have gods and mages who could possible make rifts into the ships themselves and bypass the range problem.

If you we assume the masters have enough Protoculture with them, they could also send a endless horde of clones to simply out number most other armies.

[drewkitty ~..~]

RT 1st ed...the 3G ships would not stand a chance.

RT 2nd ed---abou the same level.

[Seto Kaiba]

You think that's bad, compare it against Macross II... that stops being an unfair fight and starts being a curbstomp battle when your range advantage has to be measured in light-seconds.

(Seriously... shipboard beam guns in Macross II have a range of 200,000 miles. That's 3,333 times the typical range of the RT2E human shipboard beam weapons, and more than triple the range of "main gun" weapons in RT2E). The best part is that distance isn't an exaggeration on the part of Palladium's writers, it's demonstrated capability in the original show.

EDIT: Not just that, but the damage is way, WAY higher... with the regular turrets on the M2 version of the Nupetiet Vergnitzs-class hitting as hard at their weakest as the RT2E version's do at their strongest, while boasting 18 times the range.

[ShadowLogan]

Far as I know the strongest thing in the Phase World dimension (3 Galaxies) is the Kreeghor Dreadnought (Rifts Dimension Book 3 page 103. Their first Weapon System, the Horn Cannons, have the longest range I know of in space combat.

Fleets of the Three Galaxies: Dominator Ships. They are certainly a rival if not superior to any RAW Macross 2 or RT (1E or 2E) starship.

The best part is that distance isn't an exaggeration on the part of Palladium's writers, it's demonstrated capability in the original show.

Not sure that is entirely the case though. Per dialogue Zentreadi do attack the SDF-1 location in Ep2/3 from Lunar Orbit per dialogue, so some of the range stats aren't entirely accurate since the ships don't appear to have the necessary weapon ranges.

[drewkitty ~..~]

The best part is that distance isn't an exaggeration on the part of Palladium's writers, it's demonstrated capability in the original show.

Not sure that is entirely the case though. Per dialogue Zentraedi do attack the SDF-1 location in Ep2/3 from Lunar Orbit per dialogue, so some of the range stats aren't entirely accurate since the ships don't appear to have the necessary weapon ranges.

The first Zentraedi attack from about the orbit of the moon was a bombardment of Macross Island, not an attack on the ship itself. They wanted the ship intact through out the series, until Dolza decided to to go against the Masters orders and 'end it' by destroying everything, including the SDF-1. Which brought about the RoD attack on the planet.

So saying they didn't have the range to fire on the SDF-1 cause they didn't even scratch it when they bombarded the island is incorrect. If they had hit the ship during the bombardment then you'd might have a case.

There is also later in the series where the Zentraedi makes a 'show of force' bombardment around the SDF-1 (while in space) and the backstabber orders a precision hit of the ship on it's conning/radar tower. Which does show they can hit what they aim for 'at range'. This precedes Commander Haysa and Vermillion squadron being captured.

[ShadowLogan]

Several things drewkitty:
- dialogue establishes the gunners as taking "particular care not to damage the battle fortress" (EP3), and that attack "was from the exact same location as the first" (which was established to be in lunar orbit). So the Zentreadi gunners are doing aimed shots from Lunar Orbit at a ship in Low Earth orbit, that they didn't hit the ship doesn't disqualify the scene given they are taking care (ie aim) not to. The difference between a LEO and the surface is said to be 100miles (altitude dialogue). Lunar Orbit is over 200,000miles away. That distance involves is 0.05% difference, way to small to be a factor.
-the weapons have the range and destructive capability given that Macross Island suffers damage from the bombardment, not to mention several UEDF cruisers are destroyed (2-3 ships are named depending on the dialogue is interpreted). So the weapons are still effective at that range.
-Per the rules you can only fire 20-25% (I forget which, to lazy right now to look it up) farther than the listed range. There is no modifier for damage past the range listed, which can go farther per the rules though at this point you start looking at penalties IIRC.
-Ironically that is something that the First Edition version (original licence) actually got correct compared to Second Edition version (current licence).

[Seto Kaiba]

The best part is that distance isn't an exaggeration on the part of Palladium's writers, it's demonstrated capability in the original show.

Not sure that is entirely the case though. Per dialogue Zentreadi do attack the SDF-1 location in Ep2/3 from Lunar Orbit per dialogue, so some of the range stats aren't entirely accurate since the ships don't appear to have the necessary weapon ranges.

Please do recall that I am not talking about Robotech, but rather the Macross setting in general and the Macross II OVA and RPG in particular... in comparison to the RT2E RPG and RIFTS.

Macross is a good deal less vague and nebulous about this sort of thing, and it's one of the few details that did make it into the Palladium Macross II RPG more or less accurately... though they were dead wrong about the specific nature of the weapons involved. (They're dimension weapons, rather than "lasers".)


Ships in the Macross II game are SCARY stuff compared to RT2E... comparing like against like, the Nupetiet Vergnitzs-class fleet command battleship, you find the Macross II version's 70% tougher, 56x faster, out-ranges the RT version by an order of magnitude, deals more than 3x as much damage on average, and has a "destroys everything" main gun.

[Tor]

RT 2nd ed---abou the same level.

Maybe in the bottom/middle tiers but it still seems like in terms of comparing top-tier ships (unless something better than a Kreeghor Dreadnought has come out) the speed/range advantage allows them to wreck everyone.

Only way around it I can think of is perhaps using stealth so you can sneak up on them and get attrition since they can't easily restore damage capacity via fusion reactor powered force fields.

Fleets of the Three Galaxies: Dominator Ships. They are certainly a rival if not superior to any RAW Macross 2 or RT (1E or 2E) starship.

DB13p48... 200k for first 3 weapons... very nice. Even with their 1/100 I can't see how a Cosmo-Knight could confront something like this, or really anyone else... seems like all you can do is possible try to sneak aboard and bypass this monster.

Rather than rely on Mach speeds to close in from the terminal range of these weapons, it makes me wonder how accurate peopel can FTL jump to possibly arrive within weapons range of these things to nullify their range advantage.

Dominator Star Fortresses certainly outclass the Ikazuchi carrier (Shadow Chronicles 120) and Gardish Cruiser (Shadow Chronicles 123) which aforementioned could wreck a Dreadnought. Also seems they even out-range the SDF-1 (Macross 147) and Neputiet-Vergnitzes (Macross 193) with over triple the range...

The Star Fortresses' slow speed and low RoF could allow range-closing, requiring them to flee at warp eventually though. Although I wouldn't want to risk those anti-mattor canons... don't think Impervious to Energy would protect against that since it's a stream of hydrogen which would have mass.

Per the rules you can only fire 20-25% (I forget which, to lazy right now to look it up) farther than the listed range. There is no modifier for damage past the range listed, which can go farther per the rules though at this point you start looking at penalties IIRC.

I seem to recall seeing somewhere something along the lines of -1 to strike per 25 ft beyond your weapon's range. Can't remember where though, and this might have changed later on.

It'd quickly make space combat range differences worthless... except for -25 million to strike not even mattering if you roll a natural 20, so having a static cap seems like a good idea to me too.

That or, a a house rule to avoid absurd situations like that, a natural 20 should just count as a '100 to strike' or something like that, this way it would still potentially miss at utterly absurd ranges.

Ships in the Macross II game

Is there a different RPG adaptation of the Macross franchise besides Palladium's Robotech or something?

[Seto Kaiba]

Rather than rely on Mach speeds to close in from the terminal range of these weapons, it makes me wonder how accurate peopel can FTL jump to possibly arrive within weapons range of these things to nullify their range advantage.

Can't speak to the capabilities in the Three Galaxies setting.

In Robotech, it seems to vary depending on the quality of the fold drive. Human-built ones are supposedly pretty unreliable for most of the show's chronology, so they use salvaged Zentradi ones instead. Those are pretty accurate, able to maintain formation in the fold jump and come out in close proximity to planet-sized objects. They're supposedly warp drive-esque devices per Yune, so the accuracy may be limited to straight-line flight.

In Macross II, the accuracy of Human, Zentradi, and Mardook fold systems are pretty darn good. We've seen that they're quite capable of safely making pin-point fold jumps to safely arrive in the middle of an existing close formation, from light years away... though Macross fold tech is almost technically a form of teleportation.

Ships in the Macross II game

Is there a different RPG adaptation of the Macross franchise besides Palladium's Robotech or something?

This is... news to you?

Forgive me for my surprise, but it's literally right there in the forum title: "Robotech® - The Shadow Chronicles® - Macross II®".

Palladium Books had, in the early 90's, a license to produce a role-playing game based on the Macross 10th Anniversary series: Super Dimension Fortress Macross II: Lovers Again. The game was published in July 1993, and ran for a total of five volumes... the core rulebook, Sourcebook One, and three "Deck Plans" books produced in collaboration with Dream Pod 9 of Montreal. It's VERY inaccurate to the source material, but it's seen a lot of use as a starting point for home-brew/fan-made stat sets for mecha from the other Macross shows (which I won't link to or discuss because Palladium doesn't like that).

As noted earlier, the shipboard gun ranges of 200,000 miles or so for turrets and the big "main gun" systems are one of the few details that came through with reasonable accuracy... reflecting dialog in the original Macross series' first few episodes, in which the Macross and Vrlitwhai's Zentradi branch fleet exchange fire from distances of about a light second (280,000km).

EDIT: IIRC, V-Max also ran some Mekton Z stuff for Macross Plus, in terms of unrelated RPG adaptations of Macross stuff.

[Tor]

Ah okay I think I assumed that we were only to count Shadow Chronicles / Macross / Masters as the new 'second edition trilogy' or whatev. I guess if I read about Macross II then I had lumped it in with the old Robotech series. Guess I should weigh that stuff against the Dominator's ship if it might be better.

Does anyone know which space ships got nerfed going from 1E to 2E in terms of reduced range or speed? Damage/capacity I don't care about so much.

[Seto Kaiba]

Ah okay I think I assumed that we were only to count Shadow Chronicles / Macross / Masters as the new 'second edition trilogy' or whatev. I guess if I read about Macross II then I had lumped it in with the old Robotech series. Guess I should weigh that stuff against the Dominator's ship if it might be better.

Yeah, that's why I brought it up... the weapons stats for the Macross II versions of the Zentradi warships and the modified ones used by the Mardook absolutely blow the Robotech 2E stats for the same ships into the weeds.

Comparing like against like, the Nupetiet Vergnitzs-class fleet command battleship:

• Has 70% more "Main Body" MDC in Macross II.
• Has a flight speed 56 times faster in Macross II.
• Has no range limit on its fold system in Macross II.
• Has a "destroys everything" main gun system in Macross II, which has more than triple the range of RT2E's reflex cannon.
• Has a similar number of turret-mounted guns in both games, but the Macross II version has a 200,000 mile range (18x RT2E's range) and their weakest possible damage roll is equal to RT2E's best possible damage roll. At their best, they're 4x as powerful as RT2E's best damage roll.
• Has a comparable number of missile turrets for defense in both games, but the Macross II version's use medium or long-range missiles with up to 400x the range.
• Has over 1,000 more mecha in the Macross II version.

The other ships have similar advantages, though the severity of the difference in terms of number of weapons or flight speed varies.

(Plus, as a relevant point, while Dolza's Zentradi fleet in Robotech was supposedly the one and only... in the Macross II chronology, Gol Boddole Zer's 4,795,122 ship main fleet was the 425th Main Fleet, and one of over 1,000 Zentradi main fleets active in the galaxy. That's a LOT of Zentradi ships.)

[ShadowLogan]

Rather than rely on Mach speeds to close in from the terminal range of these weapons, it makes me wonder how accurate peopel can FTL jump to possibly arrive within weapons range of these things to nullify their range advantage.

Based on the description of the Star Forts IIRC, this isn't a viable approach.

Also seems they even out-range the SDF-1 (Macross 147) and Neputiet-Vergnitzes (Macross 193) with over triple the range...

I would point out that the "big boys" in 2E (Zent, SDF-1, etc) have been neutered compared to 1E in terms of range, and 1E seems to be closer to the actual range depicted in the show than 2E came up. 1E RT ship stats for weapon in this category are basically a Copy/Paste job into the newer Macross 2 line (essentially an AU of SDF: Macross, which is an AU to RT). Said line had the licence drop over a decade ago IINM around the time of the RT 1E licence.

IINM though those "big boys" tend to have far more weapon emplacements than most ships in T3G.

I seem to recall seeing somewhere something along the lines of -1 to strike per 25 ft beyond your weapon's range. Can't remember where though, and this might have changed later on.

I thought that was something connected with Archery, but both 1E RT Main Book and Rifts Main Book have that for firing beyond effective range in the page section about conventional firearms/gear starts (almost seems like it might only apply to Revolvers though). Not sure where/when the 30% thing was implemented or buried off hand, but it is in play by the time RUE and 2E and easily found the 25ft thing appears to be dropped.

Does anyone know which space ships got nerfed going from 1E to 2E in terms of reduced range or speed? Damage/capacity I don't care about so much.

Basically all of them in RT have nearly completely revised stats IIRC. There might be some partial things left (like damage of a Reflex Cannon).

[Tor]

Can tell finally getting into the Macross anime will be confusing, probably should watch it before Robotech dubs.

Might be nice to come up with conversion notes for the stuff that exists in 2E Robotech which existed in 1E, like "multiply range by" and "multiply speed by" or something.

the weapons stats for the Macross II versions of the Zentradi warships and the modified ones used by the Mardook absolutely blow the Robotech 2E stats for the same ships into the weeds

So basically in terms of range-win it's kind of like...

Macross II > Robotech1E > Dominators > Robotech 2E > Mechanoid Mothership > TGE > CCW > UWW

Kind of want to do a "best weapon range in the group" count-down comparison for all major space factions. Not sure where to place Aliens Unlimited or Tarlok from Skraypers since I don't recall their spacecraft being as fleshed out. TMNT Galaxy Guide probably also deserves a spot.

Based on the description of the Star Forts IIRC, this isn't a viable approach.

If trying to FTL-jump past the temporal shielding, I'd agree.

However I'm more wondering if you could use it to jump quickly from beyond 200 000 miles (safely out of reach of Star Fortress weaponry) to just outside 300 miles. This way you would still be out of range of the temporal shielding and plasma shockwaves, but would be able to utilize weapons with a 300+ mile range immediately, instead of getting shot at and taking hits as you try to close from the distance of 200k which could get you killed long before you ever get in range to take a shot.

This would make the mechanics of FTL a big portion of battle. Like how long does it take to enter FTL (perhaps if the Dominator wants to escape, or you want to join a battle against its Star Fortress) and is there any downtime/getting-your-bearings penalty for when you exit FTL to be able to engage in combat.

Like let's say you FTL'd from 400 thousand miles to 400 miles, fired a few shots at the Star Fortress, got hit once, and then FTL'd back to 400 thousand miles to go regen your shields.

This would seem like the best tactic since it doesn't have fast-regenerating force fields. All you'd have to do is inflict more than 100 MD per minute (keep rotating so it can't rest and heals at a slower rate) to whittle it down.

I guess the only problem though is that the Star Fortress can FTL too so you'd need to keep a bead on where it's located. If it had some means of hiding (or worse, following to wherever you've fled to for shield-regen) this could nullify the strategy. The effectiveness of sensors (skill rolls?) would seem critical here. Maybe piloting too, if that's what you roll for entering/exiting FTL state proficiently.

both 1E RT Main Book and Rifts Main Book have that for firing beyond effective range in the page section about conventional firearms/gear starts (almost seems like it might only apply to Revolvers though)

Guess RMBp243's penalties to hit moving/fast targets would also be exclusive to revolvers then RMBp44's combat example seems to agree with this since no penalty to strike is applied when the UAR-1 shoots medium missiles at the 'speeding' hover jet.

Revolver-exclusivity would then also apply inability to use PP bonuses, since RMBp33 only prohibits adding modern WP strike bonuses to "hand to hand or combat skill" bonuses to strike (PP bonuses being neither of those).

[ShadowLogan]

Macross II > Robotech1E > Dominators > Robotech 2E > Mechanoid Mothership > TGE > CCW > UWW

More like in general that 1E RT and Macross 2 would equal the Dominators in terms of range, at least by RAW. Though 1E RT and M2 have exceptions by RAW compared to the Dominators. Not familiar with Mechanoids and off hand I don't recall how the 3Gs stack up (aside from the Dominators).

However I'm more wondering if you could use it to jump quickly from beyond 200 000 miles (safely out of reach of Star Fortress weaponry) to just outside 300 miles. This way you would still be out of range of the temporal shielding and plasma shockwaves, but would be able to utilize weapons with a 300+ mile range immediately, instead of getting shot at and taking hits as you try to close from the distance of 200k which could get you killed long before you ever get in range to take a shot.

Probably not. The Phase Drive and Contra Grav drive seem to accelerate/decelerate to speed, and the Rifts Gates open portals. All mention some type of operating margin from planets. And while a Star Fort is more like a Moon in size, it probably would also effect those systems operating margin, though not as great I would suspect.

Then there is the issue of range. It is rare for a ship in the general 3G population to have the necessary range to fire from that far though. So it would be a lop-sided contest because the Star Fort probably has more weapons that can reach out and touch them than the reverse, even if you only brought in every 3G ship with the required range.

Fleets doesn't make the Star Forts unbeatable, they do mention the 3rd era has heavily damaged/destroyed a handful of these ships, but it was very expensive and required whole fleet actions.

[Seto Kaiba]

Can tell finally getting into the Macross anime will be confusing, probably should watch it before Robotech dubs.

It's actually pretty straightforward... most of the time.

The most common areas of confusion are about DYRL? and Macross II, which are a parallel universe from the rest of the shows. (The main continuity treats DYRL? as an in-universe historical drama film about the first space war, and a popular fan theory holds that Macross II is as well, because of how much Macross II music was reused in Macross 7.)

So basically in terms of range-win it's kind of like...

Macross II > Robotech1E > Dominators > Robotech 2E > Mechanoid Mothership > TGE > CCW > UWW

Sort of... except Macross II and Robotech 1E are pretty much on the same level for Zentradi ship stats.

(The adaptation into a RPG wasn't kind to a number of weapons in Robotech, and it was a NERFing of absolutely apocalyptic proportions for Macross II...)

[Tor]

Is there any weapon that can go further than 200 000 miles? Seems to be the highest everywhere I look.

[Seto Kaiba]

Is there any weapon that can go further than 200 000 miles? Seems to be the highest everywhere I look.

The Genesis Pits book for RT2E has one... the (deactivated) "Type V capital class" synchro cannon on the SDF-4 Liberator has a given range of 250,000 miles in space, but only 150 miles in atmosphere. It's supposedly a one-of-a-kind weapon that's been disassembled and removed from the ship it was built for though.

Edit: One of the weapons on the Mardook mobile fortress that got missed in the Macross II RPG stats would probably dominate in terms of range... a fold-based "energy irradiation" weapon that was shown as being able to strike targets in Mars orbit with pinpoint precision from the orbit of Saturn (a range of at least 746 million miles).

[Tor]

So RT2 ends up being best? *checks Gpits* Page 92, nice. It mentions a "Grand Cannon" may be considered more powerful. Since you can't get more damage than 'destroys everything' I figure it must have better range or a wider swath of destruction or something. Page 51 talks about the Grand Cannon though I'm not sure if it mentions the range it had.

Since the 200 thou guys are only 100k (half) in atmospheres, 150k is actually better than I'd expect (125k)

Firing from Saturn to Mars confuses me since they move independently around the sun in their own ovals, seems way more complicated than just calculating the shortest/longest distance the moon can be from the earth.

[Seto Kaiba]

So RT2 ends up being best? *checks Gpits* Page 92, nice.

If you assume the weapon is functional, yeah... as the stats note, the synchro cannon on the SDF-4 was disconnected, disassembled, and the firing aperture welded shut, so it might not count.

It mentions a "Grand Cannon" may be considered more powerful. Since you can't get more damage than 'destroys everything' I figure it must have better range or a wider swath of destruction or something. Page 51 talks about the Grand Cannon though I'm not sure if it mentions the range it had.

Ah, yeah... the thing about the SDF-4's synchro cannon being the most powerful except for the grand cannon one of those Palladium-isms that doesn't really line up with the animation. The synchro cannon seen on the SDF-4 in the animation is a lot less killy than the "main gun" of the SDF-1 Macross, which was able to destroy ships that were within a few hundred meters of the beam without even actually needing to score a hit. The Grand Cannon(s) from Macross (also, the Macross Saga of Robotech), were massive ground-based beam weapons with a barrel about a kilometer across and about five kilometers long that made the SDF-1's main gun look like a laser pointer. Grand Cannon I's first shot blanketed 120 degrees of the orbital space over the northern hemisphere and destroyed roughly 800,000 Zentradi warships in under a minute. (The range of the shot was at least a few tens of thousands of kilometers, but it was more designed for a big spread-out beam than long range. In Robotech, there was only the one... but there were five of them under construction in Macross.)

Firing from Saturn to Mars confuses me since they move independently around the sun in their own ovals, seems way more complicated than just calculating the shortest/longest distance the moon can be from the earth.

Well, the 746 million miles is the approximate closest that Mars and Saturn ever get in their respective orbits... there isn't an actual range stated in the animation. We just see the Mardook mobile fortress firing the weapon while in orbit of Saturn, and hitting ships orbiting Mars... in both cases, the planets are clearly visible in the scene. It's a fold-based weapon, so it wouldn't be surprising for the range to be at least as long as the mobile fortress's cross-dimensional radar range (so, at least a light day), almost certainly extendable to distances of several light years with relayed telemetry.

[Tor]

I guess I'm wondering how you found out the 746 mile thing, is there some kind of internet app where we can plug in a planet or moon orbit to find out the min/max distance?

[ShadowLogan]

Seto arrived at the ~710 million mile figure rather easily. The only App you actually need is a calculator and raw data, both easily obtained (if you're on this website the data is online and calculator programs are AFAIK standard).

NASA's website lists Mars and Saturn Distances from the Sun and orbit (can also find it in appropriate books and other websites).
Closest (Perihelion): Mars (128409598 miles) Saturn (838741509 miles) difference of 710,331,911 miles
Farthest (Aphelion): Mars (154865853 miles) Saturn (934237322 miles)
Inclination of Orbit: Mars (1.85 deg) Saturn (2.49 deg)

That ~710 million miles is an ideal best case scenario where they both pass through the same Sun's equatorial line at the same time and are at their closest distance from the sun and form a straight line connecting all 3 bodies.

I do know of one online app of Nasa's that can determine distance between two known bodies in the Solar System for a given date (the year is known in Macross 2, not sure about the exact date/time though Seto might have something like that). I haven't used it in a while, so I'm not sure if its still up. Some of the more realistic space simulator programs (and maybe a few astronomy ones for "virtual" star gazing can do off-Earth locations) out there can probably also do it (I've got the old Microsoft Space Simulator for DOS and it can do it).

[Tor]

That perihelion/aphelion stuff makes sense, I guess it's just the orbit-inclination aspect that throws me off, feels like trigonometry again.

That NASA app with dates matching up with IRL ones in Macross sounds epic useful.

[ShadowLogan]

Inclination shouldn't throw anyone off. At some point in their orbit they will cross the same plane of zero degrees for the body they are orbiting, it just lists the max degree of latitude the orbit goes to above and below the equator.

Here is the link (I think) for the NASA app:
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/

It isn't working for me right now (maybe something on my end), and the date range is sort of limited to 2025 (when I last used it I don't think the date was an issue since it was part of a discussion on the 2009-10 trip from "Pluto" to Mars via Saturn for distances). Like I said earlier, some Astronomy or realistic space simulator programs might be better given the apparent current state of the NASA app. I know Microsoft Space Simulator works for this (getting a DOS program to run now a days reliably probably requires the use of a DOS emulator, I know I had to use one for Windows XP), the freeware Orbiter might be another (I haven't used it so I can't say for sure), the open source Stellarium Planetarium Software might be able to also (I know you can change location off Earth, but off hand I don't know if it will give distance to info), etc.

EDIT: it does work, though when I tested it in 2025 it gave an error, so there might be some limits on what it can show.

[Rabid Southern Cross Fan]

In Robotech, it seems to vary depending on the quality of the fold drive. Human-built ones are supposedly pretty unreliable for most of the show's chronology, so they use salvaged Zentradi ones instead.

That is completely and totally untrue. Please, point to a single misfold that happened with human-built space fold systems?

[eliakon]

In Robotech, it seems to vary depending on the quality of the fold drive. Human-built ones are supposedly pretty unreliable for most of the show's chronology, so they use salvaged Zentradi ones instead.

That is completely and totally untrue. Please, point to a single misfold that happened with human-built space fold systems?

I wasn't aware that we had hard statements that the humans had ever built their own fold systems and did not either salvage them or get them built by Black Box assemblers on the Factory Satellite....
I thought that the 'unreliable' bit was that humans just didn't seem to know how to USE them (like folding two close to planets......)

[Rabid Southern Cross Fan]

I wasn't aware that we had hard statements that the humans had ever built their own fold systems and did not either salvage them or get them built by Black Box assemblers on the Factory Satellite

Except they have space fold systems that fit everything from a Horizon-sized shuttle upwards.....

I thought that the 'unreliable' bit was that humans just didn't seem to know how to USE them (like folding two close to planets......)

Then explain Emerson's Orbital Warps Blast Maneuver....

[Seto Kaiba]

In Robotech, it seems to vary depending on the quality of the fold drive. Human-built ones are supposedly pretty unreliable for most of the show's chronology, so they use salvaged Zentradi ones instead.

That is completely and totally untrue. Please, point to a single misfold that happened with human-built space fold systems?

No, I'm quite correct.

As noted in the "Hyperspace Fold" entry on page 40 of The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles:
"Unfortunately, as humans have been struggling to adapt this alien technology, early attempts to utilize this form of transportation were met with mixed results due to the limited range and reliability of systems recovered from salvaged alien vessels. The Second Robotech War was plagued by the separation of the Expeditionary Forces across vast distances of the galaxy before human engineers were able to independently mass-produce more capable and reliable fold systems."

There you have it... an official statement that, in Robotech, salvaged fold systems were unreliable and humans were unable to build a fold drive more reliable than the salvaged ones on their own until some point after the Second Robotech War (2030). It also goes on to note that humanity finally had a lock on their fold-related technical difficulties "by the end of the Third Robotech War".

I wasn't aware that we had hard statements that the humans had ever built their own fold systems and did not either salvage them or get them built by Black Box assemblers on the Factory Satellite

Except they have space fold systems that fit everything from a Horizon-sized shuttle upwards.....

Unless the RPG has diverged from the canon stats, the smallest human ship known to have a fold drive is the Garfish-class... neither Horizon-type shuttle design had a fold system. The official stats for both list their range as being only "Transatmospheric orbital ascent capability".

I thought that the 'unreliable' bit was that humans just didn't seem to know how to USE them (like folding two close to planets......)

Then explain Emerson's Orbital Warps Blast Maneuver....

That could easily be explained as weaponizing a known fault/safety issue in the salvaged fold systems they were using.

Warning: You have been warned in the past about engaging with Rabid Southern Cross Fan

[say652]

My money is on robotech.

[Rabid Southern Cross Fan]

There you have it... an official statement that, in Robotech, salvaged fold systems were unreliable and humans were unable to build a fold drive more reliable than the salvaged ones on their own until some point after the Second Robotech War (2030). It also goes on to note that humanity finally had a lock on their fold-related technical difficulties "by the end of the Third Robotech War".

I don't give a rat's a$$ about Tommy Yune's idiotic post hoc crapola. The Tv series says nothing whatsoever about unreliable space fold systems during The Masters War.

Warning: Insulting Palladium's business partners is treated the same as insulting palladium itself. Also you have been warned in the past not to engage with Seto Kaiba.

Unless the RPG has diverged from the canon stats, the smallest human ship known to have a fold drive is the Garfish-class... neither Horizon-type shuttle design had a fold system. The official stats for both list their range as being only "Transatmospheric orbital ascent capability".

Oh really? Care to explain how the tens of Horizon-class Shuttles we see came back with the REF in The Invid Invasion, Reflex Point and Dark Finale? How about the 14 Medium Transports from Transport Squadron 85 in Mind Games? Cause, remember, you love to claim that Robotech uses "Star Trek"-style warp....

That could easily be explained as weaponizing a known fault/safety issue in the salvaged fold systems they were using.

Safety issue....that's particularly stupid.

[eliakon]

There you have it... an official statement that, in Robotech, salvaged fold systems were unreliable and humans were unable to build a fold drive more reliable than the salvaged ones on their own until some point after the Second Robotech War (2030). It also goes on to note that humanity finally had a lock on their fold-related technical difficulties "by the end of the Third Robotech War".

I don't give a rat's a$$ about Tommy Yune's idiotic post hoc crapola. The Tv series says nothing whatsoever about unreliable space fold systems during The Masters War.

Well since HG chose to let Yune write their canon........we are sort of stuck with it as being official.
And to be honest the TV series also says nothing about the humans making fold drives either....

Unless the RPG has diverged from the canon stats, the smallest human ship known to have a fold drive is the Garfish-class... neither Horizon-type shuttle design had a fold system. The official stats for both list their range as being only "Transatmospheric orbital ascent capability".

Oh really? Care to explain how the tens of Horizon-class Shuttles we see came back with the REF in The Invid Invasion, Reflex Point and Dark Finale? How about the 14 Medium Transports from Transport Squadron 85 in Mind Games? Cause, remember, you love to claim that Robotech uses "Star Trek"-style warp....

We don't actually see them De-fold though do we? And since we already know that it is possible to 'tow' things through fold by being close enough to a folding ship.....

That could easily be explained as weaponizing a known fault/safety issue in the salvaged fold systems they were using.

Safety issue....that's particularly stupid.

Ummm even though I usually disagree with Seto I would like to point out that it is possible that this is just that. We know nothing about how this maneuver works, just that it does. It could be an exploit of a known system capability that others don't use for various (unknown to us) reasons.

[Seto Kaiba]

I don't give a rat's a$$ about Tommy Yune's idiotic post hoc crapola. The Tv series says nothing whatsoever about unreliable space fold systems during The Masters War.

That's your opinion and you're entitled to it... but we're not talking about fan-fiction in this thread, we're talking about what's in the RPG and (to a lesser extent) the show. The RPG and the official material are in relative accord on this matter, with the ships in the aftermath of the First Robotech War explicitly having been built around salvaged systems incl. reflex furnaces and fold drives, and almost all are either comparable or slightly inferior to the systems of the Zentradi ships in their original condition. (The exception being the SDF-4, which may have something to do with it being constructed at Tirol with Karbarran and Tirolian assistance.)

Oh really? Care to explain how the tens of Horizon-class Shuttles we see came back with the REF in The Invid Invasion, Reflex Point and Dark Finale? How about the 14 Medium Transports from Transport Squadron 85 in Mind Games? Cause, remember, you love to claim that Robotech uses "Star Trek"-style warp....

Certainly, my good chap.

As noted in the paragraph immediately preceding that of my earlier citation from The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles:
"A common battlefield tactic takes advantage of the range of the fold bubble to take along incapacitated vessels or to conserve Protoculture usage by simultaneously transporting groups of ships. The radius of the bubble is restricted by the capacity of the fold drive and the quantity of expendable Protoculture."

This sort of thing is clearly seen in the Shadow Chronicles movie itself, with the Icarus attempting to recover the SDF-3 and science ship Deucalion by extending its fold bubble around both ships. This is something that's perfectly possible with the type of warp drive-like operation seen in the movie because the drive is adjusting the curvature of space outside the "passenger" bubble of artificially-normalized space (and, indeed, this has been seen in Star Trek as well).

Safety issue....that's particularly stupid.

It wouldn't be the first time in Robotech someone weaponized the result of an accident or failure... like the pin-point barriers and omnidirectional barrier, and we ARE talking about a device that modifies the curvature of space-time.

[ShadowLogan]

Oh really? Care to explain how the tens of Horizon-class Shuttles we see came back with the REF in The Invid Invasion, Reflex Point and Dark Finale? How about the 14 Medium Transports from Transport Squadron 85 in Mind Games? Cause, remember, you love to claim that Robotech uses "Star Trek"-style warp....

In the same way that the SDF-1 transported Macross Island in Ep3, the Warp system creates a "bubble" and everything w/n that "bubble" is "warped" through the space-time/hyper-space. Even Star Trek uses the Warp "bubble" via dialogue, though off hand I don't recall an instance of it being used in this manner (closest that comes to mind is in TNG when they extend the "bubble" to use Q's idea of changing the gravitational constant of the universe to alter a moon's trajectory). Though the key is that it is a Star Trek-style Warp system, which can allow it to have some other properties that are different than the Star Trek system.

Then explain Emerson's Orbital Warps Blast Maneuver....

We know from Ep3 that there is a minimum distance ("out of gravity") to execute a Fold safely, we just don't know what it is. Now we don't know why Gloval didn't just execute the Fold at the orbital altitude he was at in Ep3 (100miles), so we don't know how close the SDF-1 was to being "out of gravity" (as Exedore would put it) when in orbit, but we certainly can say that at 2,000ft altitude the maneuver was executed wasn't anywhere near being "out of gravity" since they went closer to Earth instead of farther away.

We know from the Orbital Warp Blast Manuever that they where in a Lagrange Point 6 (which technically doesn't exist, but lets go with it for now), if it is like other Lagrange Points (1-5) and not some code, then in a manner of speaking they would be "out of gravity" because at Lagrange Points gravity is balanced out between two objects and might be an aerea that is is exempt since the gravity of the two bodies cancel each other out. Plus the distance to Mars (??? or a code name) that is stated is much farther than the SDF-1's initial orbit mentioned in ep3, so they aren't exactly operating anywhere near a planet apparently.

You are also forgetting that they "might get sucked in" themselves was voiced as a concern. So I would not say it's an example of reliable fold use just based on the possible outcome raised (even if it didn't happen). Nor am I necessarily convinced that the OWB = Fold system use just based on the show (I know its put that way outside of the show, but w/n the show... it could merely be a variant application of gravity mines using the ships artificial gravity system).

That could easily be explained as weaponizing a known fault/safety issue in the salvaged fold systems they were using.

Why does it (Orbital Warp Blast) have to be a fault/safety issue at all? It isn't like technology (in general) can not have multiple applications and/or modes of use depending on what you want to do with it, or hook it up with.

[devillin]

However I'm more wondering if you could use it to jump quickly from beyond 200 000 miles (safely out of reach of Star Fortress weaponry) to just outside 300 miles. This way you would still be out of range of the temporal shielding and plasma shockwaves, but would be able to utilize weapons with a 300+ mile range immediately, instead of getting shot at and taking hits as you try to close from the distance of 200k which could get you killed long before you ever get in range to take a shot.

Probably not. The Phase Drive and Contra Grav drive seem to accelerate/decelerate to speed, and the Rifts Gates open portals. All mention some type of operating margin from planets. And while a Star Fort is more like a Moon in size, it probably would also effect those systems operating margin, though not as great I would suspect.

In my Robotech/Phase World campaign, we hit upon the same issues with using the 1st Edition stats for Robotech. As written, the Garfish and other Robotech-based ship we were using spanked the PW ships every battle without a responding shot being fired. We ended up using a variation of Kitsune's PW combat system that I have on my page. We basically increased all space ranges for PW weapons by 1000. We also allowed ships with CG and Phase drives to be able to skip through space, within the orbital gravity shadow limits. As long as the navigator passed their Space Navigation roll, they could skip themselves to anywhere they wanted. We also had stuff like military vessels had two or three CG Drives, so that while one drive is resting/recharging/or being repaired, the other one could be used to do a space skip. A military ship could also use one drive to increase the gravitational field of an area, making it impossible for nearby ships to CG skip away, or to cause damage to ships trying to CG skip into gun range (who didn't realize the cruiser now has the gravity field of a moon). Fold drives could do the same kind of thing, but the charge up time was measured in minutes, versus seconds for CG and Phase drives.

[Alrik Vas]

Soooo...increased range, FTL skipping and interdiction on demand?

It's your game, so I can't say much, but I think it's overboard.

[devillin]

It was either that, or just give away free salvage loot. 3G ships have less range (by about 10,000x) and are far slower (Mach Speeds versus up to .20 light speed in normal space). In a battle between a Smasher and an Ikazuchi equivalent Robotech ship, the fight sequence was basically:
Smasher: closes range
Robotech Ship: Fires 5 Zentraedi lasers
repeat 5 times
Smasher: closes range
RS: Fires 5 Zentraedi lasers. Smasher's shields go down.
Smasher: closes range
RS: Fires 5 Zentraedi lasers, Hull damage
repeat 18 more times, Smasher launches fighters just before it shuts down.

This is 25 rounds, and the Smasher is still 6 rounds out of its longest weapon's range, and the Robotech ship isn't even moving.

Sure, you can do stuff like "Your Robotech ship de-folds into the middle of a TGE taskforce. Roll for initiative." But how often can you do that before your players start calling foul? So your options are to either cripple the Robotech ship abilities (as per 2nd Edition Robotech), or just boost the 3G warships' ability to be either close or equivalent.

[Seto Kaiba]

It was either that, or just give away free salvage loot. 3G ships have less range (by about 10,000x) and are far slower (Mach Speeds versus up to .20 light speed in normal space). In a battle between a Smasher and an Ikazuchi equivalent Robotech ship, the fight sequence was basically:

Yeah, you run into a similar problem if you try to drag Robotech 2E ships and equipment into the Macross universe(s).

When I was running a multi-year Macross II campaign, I had a buddy who really desperately wanted to do a crossover with his Sentinels-era Robotech game. He tried two or three times, and ended up very angry each time, because the ship that he had given over to his player characters as their home base was pretty much an RT2E ARMD with a fold drive and his rather gung-ho NPCs and PCs couldn't just bumrush an enemy at standoff range without giving them anywhere from 125 to 2,336 melees worth of free shots at his ship while it tried in vain to close the distance.

[Alrik Vas]

So you're saying all that did was just close the distance between the two?

Well, for storytelling in guess we do what we must.

[glitterboy2098]

keep in mind.. you need to look at the time it takes to reach those high speeds. while the 'top speeds' are higher*, it takes robotech ships a month to reach them. their actual acceleration is absolutely tiny! which means they can't really use that high speed tactically. (because that acceleration also governs how rapidly they can change course)

since robotech forces are unlikely to have a month's warning about when a battle is going to occur at a location, odds are they'll be in orbit around a world or in a slower orbit between worlds. which means the robotech ships will be practically immobile compared to the phase world ones.

as a result the battles would be robotech ships in their 'walls of battle' or just in a basic swarm, using their range to try and pummel the phase world ships.. which can pretty much enter and exit their own ranges at will, and can more easily maneuver around the limited fire arcs of the robotech ship's big guns.
the robotech ships would attempt to offset this using their much larger mecha/fighter compliments, but phase world fighters are generally much faster as well.



* there are actually references to phaseworld ships having a max speed of 60% of light in sublight, we just have no official rules on how to reach that or how it works in relation to the listed mach numbers. if we assume that the listed numbers are supposed to represent acceleration, then phase world ships end up superior all around speed wise, with twice the top speed and accelerations several hundred times higher.

[Kagashi]

Even without ships, the basic UEDF Destroids boast 20 mile ranges with main guns, far out ranging even the most powerful Glitter Boy where a two mile range is pretty much the extent of mecha sized weapons in Rifts/PW. And second edition Earth mecha all saw MDC boosts which rival anything in Rifts, so even close combat will be a fair fight, assuming the PW ships and mecha can get close enough at from the time the battle starts to when they can close the gap.

PW does have a distinct advantage through. Many ships boast magic features, which when used on Robotech crews, would be very alien to them and may provide enough confusion to get the upper hand. Something like a Cosmo Knight would be difficult for Robotech crews to comprehend...a single man sized, non mecha being unleashing enormous amounts of power and seemingly indestructible to energy weapons...that is very foreign to Robotech other than what was seen with the Regiss on her initial attack on Earth and departure from Earth.

Variable and standard force fields, a common feature to even small fighter ships in PW, will also provide an enormous advantage. When a PW ship gets hit, there is a good chance a force field took the majority of the damage. Retreat and recharge with little to no cost in resources to fight another day. If a Robotech ship gets hit, its sent to dry docks for repairs which costs time and money/resources, especially if Zentraedi.

And as noted above, PW ships are more maneuverable in terms of FTL. They can pop in and out of range better than RT ships can. That is a very important capability, taking the fight to the RT fleet on their own terms.

Rifts Space's Orbital Communities do not stand a chance against Robotech. The Arkhons might be able to go toe to toe for a while with their mecha and fighters, but suffer the same range issues as the rest of Rifts and have no magic capabilities, plus we have no idea what an Arkhon capitol ship is even capable of other than it couldnt take out the Orbital Communities in either 74 PA or 104 PA, which leads me to believe they are not all that capable and are most likely nothing but mecha/ship carriers with little to no battleship capabilities. But even if the OCs banded together, their numbers are only a fraction of what something like Invid can bear upon them. The Masters would obliterate the OCs from hundreds of thousands of miles away, which they could have done in the show as well, but they were searching for the Protoculture and didnt want to destroy it. The OCs have no such protection and would be targeted for destruction immediately.

[Alrik Vas]

I don't understand the "takes a month" thing for the speed of the robotech ships.

Physixplain?

[glitterboy2098]

(looking through the books again, the ship's top speeds are substantially less that my memory indicated, but they are still substantial and best measured relative to the speed of light)

remember that in space movement is based on inertia. with no air there is no drag so that once moving, stuff stays moving. much more important is how fast they can reach a given speed, how long it takes. that is, the acceleration.

the ships can reach up to a certain % of the speed of light (give or take), but it takes them time to reach that. much like how you measure car speeds in terms of "zero to 60 in X seconds" as a way to show how rapidly something gets up to speed, these ships acceleration is a key factor. it's not like they just suddenly go from relative stop to one third light in an instant.

and it matters for more than just how long it takes to get to a given speed. in space if you want to change course, you have to accelerate along the new course, which will gradually curve your path over to where you want it. as a result, the rate at which they accelerate is also a good indicator of how rapidly they can change direction. like for example, if they were being attacked from a flank and wanted to turn to close on that enemy.


with the speed of light being roughly 1 million mach, the current robotech ships have accelerations of the following:

Zentreadi flagship (0.00357c [mach 3570] in 8 days) or an increase of 0.077 mach per melee, 0.309 mach a minute, 18.59 mach per hour
Zentreadi destroyer (0.00416c [mach 4160] in 7 days) or an increase of 0.10 mach per melee, 0.413 mach a minute, 24.76 mach per hour

SDF-1 (0.00277c [mach 2770] in 10 days) or an increase of 0.048 mach per melee, 0.192 mach a minute, 11.54 mach per hour

ARMD (mach 204 in 1 day) or an increase of 0.035 mach per melee, 0.141 mach a minute, 8.5 mach per hour
Oberth (mach 224 in 1 day) or an increase of 0.039 mach per melee, 0.156 mach a minute, 9.3 mach per hour

Tristar (mach 591 in 3 days) or an increase of 0.034 mach per melee, 0.137 mach a minute, 8.21 mach per hour
masters mothership (0.003c [mach 3000] in 10 days) or an increase of 0.052 mach a melee, 0.208 mach a minute, 12.5 mach per hour.


so given we've been told that phase world vessels have a max of .6c (600,000 mach), do the listed mach numbers for phase world ships represent the speed they gain in a melee, a minute, or an hour?

that would put them to the same mechanics and make comparison easier.

[Alrik Vas]

Are the rates of acceleration you listed your own extrapolation? It's been a while since I've read the books, and they're packed deep....deeeeeep.

Also, if no information is given on how quickly the PW ships accelerate, why assume it's so much better?

[glitterboy2098]

the listed fractions of "c" and times are direct from the books. the rates by melee, minute, and hour are calculated from them. 1 day = 24 hours, 60 minutes to the hour, 4 melee's to the minute.
the number of mach equallingthe speed of light is my own calculation, done by taking the speed of light (a known value) and dividing it by the velocity palladium uses for mach #'s.

and i'm not assuming anything regarding the phase world ships. we have listed values of mach for them in the books. we also are told (in anvil galaxy) that the max sublight velocity of phaseworld ships is 60% the speed of light.

which means that the listed mach numbers are not max speeds, but some form of acceleration value. the question just becomes over how much time?


but even if we ignore that bit.. phase world ships can change course faster and will generally have a higher velocity in the actual combat location.

[Alrik Vas]

How is it that is apparent? Do they say they are more maneuverable? Sorry, I'm not seeing the connection.

[Lt Gargoyle]

I tend to just use the large Ships as story line, and back ground. the math is nice but In a fast pace game at the table, i see it as slowing the game down.

[Seto Kaiba]

I tend to just use the large Ships as story line, and back ground. the math is nice but In a fast pace game at the table, i see it as slowing the game down.

That's pretty much the only way to use 'em with Palladium's ship combat rules... unless you want your game bogging down to WH40K Apocalypse levels thanks to every melee requiring you to count out and roll dice by the bucketful.

This is an especially big problem in Palladium's Robotech and Macross II lines, where the ship stats are unbalanced to the point of comical uselessness in defiance of their respective official settings, and in which the enemy ships often have so many beam guns and missile launchers that they can be bringing a hundred or more weapons to bear on one target several times a melee.

From my own experience, players often have real problems visualizing the sheer scale of a lot of the ships in the Macross II or Robotech settings. This is especially true when they're called upon to actually control those ships directly. People can frame a twelve meter tall robot or a fighter plane in their head easily enough, but a multi-kilometer space battleship just lacks an easy frame of reference. It's easier by far to have them utterly divorced from the actual operation of the ship, and just treat it as scenery or a piece of destructible terrain.

(That approach is easily justifiable WRT Macross/Macross II... since standard tactics is to send the fighters in first to gain the upper hand and strafe enemy ships so you don't have to risk your own fleet in a capital ship slugging match.)

[Lt Gargoyle]

Yea, The Ship rules suck, and i highly doubt we will get really good ones. And I do agree I think most players have a hard time visualizing the mere size of these vessels. But I also think the Animation of robotech/macross messed this up too. I mean we see this huge city inside the SDF-1 and the size of that town has no chance of fitting into a ship like this. No ship would have that much empty space. not even for storage. A sub is a very tight space. Every available space is used for machinery and parts to make that vessel to work.

So people think ships are like the Tartus from doctor who. But as much as i love the Ship and I do want stats so i can have battle in space, those are purely for background story and I have an over idea of the out come.

But I do get why player and GM's want to have a ship of the own and to have massive ship battles. But after those very vessels get busted up and battle damage it can take a ton or resources to repair and a large amount or workers to get it up and running again. not to mention the amount of time.

[Seto Kaiba]

Yea, The Ship rules suck, and i highly doubt we will get really good ones. And I do agree I think most players have a hard time visualizing the mere size of these vessels.

That's what house rules are for, thank goodness... it's especially easy to do in Macross II, since the UN Spacy ships are built with much of the same overtechnology as goes into Zentradi and Meltrandi ships. Once you sort out their actual sizes (most are around the size of the SDF-1) it's pretty easy to re-arm them appropriately and further simplify the ship stats.

But I also think the Animation of robotech/macross messed this up too. I mean we see this huge city inside the SDF-1 and the size of that town has no chance of fitting into a ship like this. No ship would have that much empty space. not even for storage. A sub is a very tight space. Every available space is used for machinery and parts to make that vessel to work.

Actually, Macross's creators put a fair amount of thought into how the city would actually fit into the ship... the problem is that the nature of the job makes it hard to show the city as a whole, because it's built into pretty much every open space inside the ship and gravity control means there's not a common definition of "down" that applies to the entire city. (It also helped that they were able to displace a lot of the stored equipment, vehicles, and personnel to a pair of externally-docked warships as well, each of which was a small floating city in its own right.)

Almost all of the Zentradi/Meltrandi, Supervision Army, and Mardook ships in the Macross universes are that roomy... judging spacecraft from a civilization that achieved faster-than-light travel 450,000 years before humans sorted out fire by the standards of modern submarines is a bit of a false parallel. They're not exactly cramped by Zentradi standards, but being built in expectation of crew who are five times the height of a typical human means they're unintentionally quite roomy for miclone-scale humanity. The overtechnology the ships are built on keeps the size of vital systems relatively small, and they further diminish it by bucking the SF trend of having one huge central reactor or stardrive by having numerous clusters of smaller, decentralized systems so that losing one of anything isn't a crippling blow. Thanks to that, most of their internal volume is open for living space, supply storage, and more military pursuits like hangar space.

Of course, both Robotech and the RPG exaggerate the crew counts, mecha capacities, and so on by a considerable margin... along with citing ludicrous dimensions... which doesn't help the scale problem.

But I do get why player and GM's want to have a ship of the own and to have massive ship battles. But after those very vessels get busted up and battle damage it can take a ton or resources to repair and a large amount or workers to get it up and running again. not to mention the amount of time.

Likewise... but it's a lot easier to manage when the ship in question is something like the Shimakaze-class from Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, where the number of weapons you have to worry about can be counted on one hand, and the whole command crew can fit comfortably into a minivan. Unfortunately, ships on such a small scale are generally only available in Robotech in the New Generation and Shadow Chronicles arcs, and are entirely absent from Macross.

[Rabid Southern Cross Fan]

The Rules as Written for the ships in Robotech (especially those of The Masters War) in no way, shape or form resemble those we see in the Tv series. They have been intentionally nerfed to the point of being ludicrous caricatures of what is shown. Case in point, the Masters Bioroid Assault Frigate has less armor than the Horizon-class Shuttle. The weapons ranges given for all the Earth ships of the 2nd Robotech War are in no way indicative of what is shown, as its rather blatant they have ranges measured in the tens of thousands if not more than a hundred thousand kilometers.

Mind Games 1

Clearly, the city-ships in that shot are far closer to the moon than they are the Earth, just as the Light Cruisers opening fire are near the Earth and NOT the moon. This was AFTER the linkup between Emerson's Moon Base Luna forces, the REF T-Squadron and the Earth Assault Fleet.

Mind Games 2
Mind Games 3

The standard Anti-Ship Missiles carried by the Light Cruiser, Battlecruiser and Tristar-class Large Cruiser all have damage yields that are far too low to represent what was seen. We know the Spacelord (as the uRRG called them) have some kind of thermonuclear warhead. And they are fired in volleys of 10 because they come out of the 10-tube launchers. These are, most certainly, NOT anti-mecha missiles as the Tristar entry in the RPG would have you believe.

We see the Bioroid Assault Frigate shrugging off not only mecha-scale missiles, but also fire from the Ajax is splashed all over its hull and isn't crippled in response. This compared with the Horizon which blows up when rammed by an Invid Pincer or even the Garfish that has a giant gaping hole opened up by a swipe from a Pincer's claws....

Bioroid Frigate

The RAW does not represent in any way, shape or form the ships we see in Robotech. Given what has been written about with the ships of The Three Galaxies, Robotech Earth ships (let alone the glass cannon Zentraedi or the nigh-impenetrable Tirolian) would maul them.